Lesson 19: Using Conditional Formatting

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Introduction

Let's say you have a spreadsheet with thousands of rows of data. It would be extremely difficult to see patterns and trends just from examining the raw data. Excel gives us several tools that will make this task easier. One of these tools is called conditional formatting. With conditional formatting, you can apply formatting to one or more cells based on the value of the cell. You can highlight interesting or unusual cell values, and visualize the data using formatting such as colors, icons, and data bars.

In this lesson, you'll learn how to apply, modify, and remove conditional formatting rules.

Conditional formatting

Conditional formatting applies one or more rules to any cells you want. An example of a rule might be If the value is greater than 5000, color the cell yellow. By applying this rule to the cells in a worksheet, you'll be able to see at a glance which cells are more than 5000. There are also rules that can mark the top 10 items, all cells that are below the average, cells that are within a certain date range, and many more.

To create a conditional formatting rule:

In the Home tab, click the Conditional Formatting command. A drop-down menu will appear.

Select Highlight Cells Rules or Top/Bottom Rules. We'll choose Highlight Cells Rules for this example. A menu will appear with several rules.

Select the desired rule (Greater Than, for example).

Selecting the Greater Than rule

From the dialog box, enter a value in the space provided, if applicable. In this example, we want to format cells that are greater than $5000, so we'll enter 5000 as our value. If you want, you can enter a cell reference instead of a number.

Select a formatting style from the drop-down menu.

Entering a value and formatting style

The formatting will be applied to the selected cells.

The formatted cells

If you want, you can apply more than one rule to your cells.

Conditional formatting presets

Excel has several presets you can use to quickly apply conditional formatting to your cells. They are grouped into three categories:

Data bars are horizontal bars added to each cell, much like a bar graph.

Data Bars

Color scales change the color of each cell based on its value. Each color scale uses a two- or three-color gradient. For example, in the Green-Yellow-Red color scale, the highest values are green, the average values are yellow, and the lowest values are red.

Color Scales

Icon sets add a specific icon to each cell based on its value.

Icon Sets

To use preset conditional formatting:

Select the cells you want to add formatting to.

In the Home tab, click the Conditional Formatting command. A drop-down menu will appear.